Battlefield Earth (2000)

May 12, 2000

FILM REVIEW; Earth Capitulates in 9 Minutes to Mean Entrepreneurs From Space

By ELVIS MITCHELL

Published: May 12, 2000

''Man is an endangered species,'' announces one of the titles at the beginning of the sci-fi lump ''Battlefield Earth.'' And after about 20 minutes of this amateurish picture, extinction doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Sitting through it is like watching the most expensively mounted high school play of all time. The film is stocked with evil aliens who, in their padded body stockings, plastic armorlike fittings and matted hair extensions, resemble nothing so much as members of GWAR, the metal-rock parodists that Beavis and Butt-head loved. It may be a bit early to make such judgments, but ''Battlefield Earth'' may well turn out to be the worst movie of this century.

''Plan Nine From Outer Space'' for a new generation, ''Battlefield Earth'' is set in the year 3000, after the beings from the planet Psychlo have conquered our planet in only nine minutes. Humans have been reduced to grunting illiterates by the Psychlos (who have the same name as their home planet). ''Stupid man-animals,'' bellow the Psychlos, who at nine feet tower over the Earthlings, though several feet of Psychlo height seems to come from the offworld Doc Martens they sport.

The chief nasty, Terl (John Travolta), wants nothing more than to finish his stretch supervising workers on Earth and return home to Psychlo. But political matters, which make parts of this movie look like some alien version of C-Span, trap him on Earth forever. Terl devises a scheme to put the man-animals to work in the gold mines for him, after which he'll have a small fortune and rule Psychlo forever.

Terl sees potential in one particularly rebellious cave dweller (Barry Pepper) and straps him to a machine that beams the wisdom of the ages into his head. Little does Terl realize that by educating a human, he is sowing the seeds of his own destruction.

Adapted from the novel by L. Ron Hubbard, who cranked out sci-fi pulp by the cubic ton, ''Battlefield Earth'' has the musty feel of the days when the genre's highlight was Flash Gordon. For example, it never gets around to explaining what Psychlos do with gold in the first place.

They also have to write reports and send them back to the home office, where presumably work even duller than this takes place: that's right, it's the horrifying Planet of the Bureaucrats.

None of the aliens -- who apparently are evil just because it feels good -- get around to chortling: ''Puny Earthlings! No one can save you now!'' But Mr. Travolta does the next best thing. He throws back his head and delivers a stage laugh that would embarrass the villain from the shoddiest Republic Pictures serial or an episode of ''Xena: Warrior Princess.'' The eye-rolling broadness of his turn in ''Broken Arrow'' suddenly becomes a marvel of nuance and understatement.

''Battlefield Earth,'' directed by Roger Christian (''Nostradamus,'' ''Masterminds''), is beyond conventional criticism. It belongs in the elect pantheon that includes such delights as ''Showgirls'' and ''Revolution'': the Moe Howard School of Melodrama.

Hubbard created the Church of Scientology -- news to just about no one -- and when the beams of light fly into the bound Mr. Pepper's head, it has the unfortunate appearance of a nightmare version of Scientology. (Mr. Travolta, a member of Scientology, is one of the film's producers.)

The only professional thing about the movie is the sound: it's so loud you feel as if you're sitting on a runway with jets taking off over your head. The drone of real aircraft would be preferable to what passes for plot. Mr. Travolta is a big enough star to survive ''Battlefield Earth,'' though any career that includes this film and the sludgy melodrama ''Moment by Moment'' may be placing too much faith in the karma of the comeback. Surprisingly, Forest Whitaker defies the laws of dramatic gravity and entertains as Terl's idiotic sidekick, Ker.

Mr. Pepper's character is referred to by his fellow Earthlings as a greener, meaning he's always looking to the other side, where the grass is greener. That would be just about anyplace other than theaters showing ''Battlefield Earth.''

Directed by Roger Christian; written by Corey Mandell and J. D. Shapiro, based on the novel by L. Ron Hubbard; director of photography, Giles Nuttgens; edited by Robin Russell; music by Elia Cmiral; production designer, Patrick Tatopoulos; produced by Elie Samaha, Jonathan D. Krane and John Travolta; released by Warner Brothers. Running time: 117 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.